Vidyādharapiṭaka, 2 Definition(s)

Vidyādharapiṭaka means something in Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism Check out some of the following descriptions and leave a comment if you want to add your own contribution to this article:

2 Definition(s) from various sources:

In seventh-century India, the Chinese pilgrim I-Tsing remarks upon a large collection of texts devoted to tantric ritual, one hundred thousand stanzas long, known as the vidyādharapiṭaka, or the “basket (-piṭaka) of the vidyādharas,” in contrast to the sūtra collection of the bodhisattvapiṭaka, or “basket of bodhisattvas.”

The Vidyādhara Collection (Chi ming zhou cang 持明咒藏; Vidyādharapiṭaka), a text that was compiled during the mid-seventh century. The Vidyādhara Collection is, on the surface, much like the many “proto-Tantric” texts that were translated into Chinese from the fourth century onward.4 These typically consist of esoteric mantra [page 3] or dhāraṇī as well as descriptions of the rituals in which they can be employed. However, this text also contains many of the features that would characterize esoteric Buddhist discourse, and seems to be one of the earliest texts produced as a self-consciously esoteric Buddhist scripture.